neuromorphogenesis:

When Bilinguals Speak

Anyone observing bilinguals speaking to different people during any one day will notice quite readily that they keep to one language when they are communicating with people who do not know their other language(s). However, they may well code-switch into, or borrow from, their other language(s) when their interlocutors know the same languages and the situation is conducive to language intermingling.

Bilinguals navigate along a continuum with two endpoints - a monolingual language mode where only one language is fully active and a bilingual language mode where several languages can be active. The consequence of this is that the state of activation of bilinguals’ languages will vary from moment to moment. Numerous factors, both internal and external, control the level of activation at any given time.

Psycholinguists have developed very refined experimental procedures to show that bilingual language production is a dynamic process which can operate in different language activation states. Recently, Dutch researchers Daan Hermans, Ellen Ormel, Ria Besselaar and Janet van Hell undertook a study which shows that even the lexical similarity between the two languages known by the bilingual, under certain circumstances, can play a role in changing the level of activation of the bilingual’s languages. They did this by manipulating the presence of cognates, i.e. translation equivalents that have similar orthographic and phonological forms in two languages, such as “apple” in English and “appel” in Dutch.

The researchers asked Dutch-English bilinguals to look at pictures on a computer screen followed by a letter representing a phoneme (e.g. the letter “b” represents the phoneme /b/). The bilinguals had to decide whether the phoneme was part of the English name of the picture being presented; they did so by pushing on a “yes” or a “no” button. There were three conditions in this phoneme monitoring study:

a) In the affirmative condition, the phoneme was indeed part of the English name of the picture. For example, the picture was that of a bottle and it was followed by a “b” or a “t”; the answer was “yes” therefore.

b) In the cross-language condition, the phoneme was not part of the English name but rather of the Dutch name of the picture. For example, “f” was presented and it is part of “fles”, the Dutch translation equivalent of “bottle”. Here the answer was “no” therefore (recall that participants had to base themselves on the English name of the picture).

c) Finally, in the unrelated condition, the phoneme was neither part of the English nor of the Dutch name. For example, “p” is not part of “bottle” nor of “fles”.

Now came the subtlety permitted by a good experimental design. The pictures shown to the bilinguals were divided up into two categories: half the pictures were used in the experimental condition where there was an English name which had a noncognate translation equivalent in Dutch. Examples were English “bottle” and Dutch “fles”, English “pillow” and Dutch “kussen”, etc. The other half of the pictures were used in the filler condition. It is here that the experiments that were run by the researchers differed from one another (we will look at two of them). In the first, all the filler pictures also had noncognate names in Dutch and English. Hence, if one adds the two halves of the experiment, no picture was followed by a letter that corresponded to a sound in the Dutch name of the picture. In sum, the experiment was monolingual, both overtly and covertly.

The results they obtained in this first experiment showed that there was no difference between the cross-language condition and the unrelated condition (the two conditions of interest), be it in reaction times or in accuracy scores. Basically, the Dutch translation equivalents of the English names of the pictures were not active. In other words, the participants were in a monolingual English mode.

In their second experiment, all the authors did was to change the pictures in the filler condition. They now had cognate names in English and Dutch, such as “moon” and Dutch “maan”, “mouse” and Dutch “muis”, and so on. (Note that they did not change the pictures in the experimental condition). This time the two critical conditions (cross-language and unrelated) did produce different response latencies and accuracy scores. It took the participants more time to do the task in the cross-language condition than in the unrelated condition, and they were less accurate in the former condition. What was happening there was that the phonological representations of the Dutch picture names were activated and they slowed down the response regarding the presence of a phoneme in the English name.

Based on these findings, the authors concluded that the bilingual language production system is indeed dynamic and that it can operate in different activation states depending on a number of factors. The level of activation of the bilingual’s languages will be due to linguistic factors, such as in the above, but also psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic factors such as who you are talking to, whether you are using the “right language” to talk about the subject in question, how well you know the language you are speaking, how recently you have spoken the other language, the presence of speakers of the other language(s), and so on. The bilingual production process is wonderfully sensitive to all these factors and this promises many intriguing research findings in the years to come.

neuromorphogenesis:

How to fight a psychological scourge of the modern world.

We worry about work, money, our health, our partners, children…the list goes on.

And let’s face it, there are plenty of things to worry about, and that’s even before you’ve turned on the news. This means that when the mind is given an idle moment, often what it seems to fill it with is worrying.

Worry can be useful if it’s aimed at solving problems but less useful when it’s just making us unhappy or interfering with our daily lives.

The standard psychological methods for dealing with everyday worry are pretty simple. But just because they’re simple and relatively well-known doesn’t mean we don’t need reminding to use them from time-to-time.

So here is a five-step plan called “The Peaceful Mind” that was actually developed by psychologists specifically for people with dementia (Paukert et al., 2013). Because of this it has a strong focus on the behavioural aspects of relaxation and less on the cognitive. That suits our purposes here as the cognitive stuff (what you are worrying about) can be quite individual, whereas the behavioural things, everyone can do.

1. Awareness

This is the step most people skip. Why? Because it feels like we already know the answer. You probably already think you know what makes you anxious.

But sometimes the situations, physical signs and emotions that accompany anxiety aren’t as obvious as you might think. So try keeping a kind of ‘anxiety journal’, whether real or virtual. When do you feel anxious and what are the physical signs of anxiety?

Sometimes this stage on its own is enough to help people with their anxiety. As I never tire of saying, especially in the area of habits, self-awareness is the first step to change.

2. Breathing

Both mind and body each feed back to the other. For example, standing confidently makes people feel more confident. Mind doesn’t just affect body, body also affects mind.

It’s the same with anxiety: taking conscious control of breathing sends a message back to the mind.

So, when you’re anxious, which is often accompanied by shallow, quick breathing, try changing it to relaxed breathing, which is usually slower and deeper. You can count slowly while breathing in and out and try putting your hand on your stomach and feeling the breath moving in and out.

In addition, adopt whatever bodily positions you associate with being relaxed (although suddenly lying down before giving a talk in public might be a step too far!). Typically these are things like relaxing muscles, adopting an open stance to the world (unfold arms, hint of a smile).

3. Calming thoughts

It’s all very well saying: “Think calming thoughts”, but who can think of any calming thoughts when stressful situations are approaching and the heart is pumping?

The key is to get your calming thoughts ready in advance. They could be as simple as “Calm down!” but they need to be things that you personally believe in for them to be most effective. It’s about finding what form of words or thoughts is right for you.

4. Increase activity

It might seem strange to say that the answer to anxiety is more activities, as we tend to think the answer to anxiety is relaxation and that involves doing less.

But, when unoccupied, the mind wanders, often to anxieties; whereas when engaged with an activity we enjoy, we feel better. Even neutral or somewhat wearing activities, like household admin, can be better than sitting around worrying.

The problem with feeling anxious is that it makes you less likely to want to engage with distracting activities. You see the problem.

One answer is to have a list of activities that you find enjoyable ready in advance. When anxiety hits at an inactive moment, you can go off and do something to occupy your mind.

Try to have things on your list that you know you will enjoy and are easy to get started on. For example, ‘invent a time machine’ may be biting off a tiny bit more than you can chew, but ‘a walk around the block’ is do-able.

5. Sleep skills

Often when people are anxious they have problems sleeping. Sometimes when you feel anxious there’s nothing worse than lying in bed, in the dark, with only your own thoughts to occupy your attention.

And lack of sleep leads to anxiety about sleeping which can lead, paradoxically, to worse sleep.

neuroticthought:

by Deric Bownds

An interesting article in the Harvard Magazine describes the life work of Ellen Langer, her demonstrations that our social self image (old versus young, for example) strongly patterns our actual vitality and physiology, her work on Mindfulness, unconscious processing, etc. I recommend that you read the article. Here are some clips from its beginning that hooked me (I actually did my own mini-repeat of the experiment described, a simple self-experiment of pretending that I had been transported back in time to 40 years ago, and convinced myself I was experiencing some of the effects described)…

In 1981, early in her career at Harvard, Ellen Langer and her colleagues piled two groups of men in their seventies and eighties into vans, drove them two hours north to a sprawling old monastery in New Hampshire, and dropped them off 22 years earlier, in 1959. The group who went first stayed for one week and were asked to pretend they were young men, once again living in the 1950s. The second group, who arrived the week afterward, were told to stay in the present and simply reminisce about that era. Both groups were surrounded by mid-century mementos—1950s issues of Life magazine and the Saturday Evening Post, a black-and-white television, a vintage radio—and they discussed the events of the time: the launch of the first U.S. satellite, Castro’s victory ride into Havana, Nikita Khrushchev and the need for bomb shelters.

…Before and after the experiment, both groups of men took a battery of cognitive and physical tests, and after just one week, there were dramatic positive changes across the board. Both groups were stronger and more flexible. Height, weight, gait, posture, hearing, vision—even their performance on intelligence tests had improved. Their joints were more flexible, their shoulders wider, their fingers not only more agile, but longer and less gnarled by arthritis. But the men who had acted as if they were actually back in 1959 showed significantly more improvement. Those who had impersonated younger men seemed to have bodies that actually were younger.

neuromorphogenesis:

Negative Emotions in Response to Daily Stress Take a Toll on Long-Term Mental Health

Our emotional responses to the stresses of daily life may predict our long-term mental health, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Psychological scientist Susan Charles of the University of California, Irvine and colleagues conducted the study in order to answer a long-standing question: Do daily emotional experiences add up to make the straw that breaks the camel’s back, or do these experiences make us stronger and provide an inoculation against later distress?

Using data from two national surveys, the researchers examined the relationship between daily negative emotions and mental health outcomes ten years later.

Participants’ overall levels of negative emotions predicted psychological distress (e.g., feeling worthless, hopeless, nervous, and/or restless) and diagnosis of an emotional disorder like anxiety or depression a full decade after the emotions were initially measured.

Participants’ negative emotional responses to daily stressors — such as argument or a problem at work or home — predicted psychological distress and self-reported emotional disorder ten years later.

The researchers argue that a key strength of the study was their ability to tap a large, national community sample of participants who spanned a wide age range. The results were based on data from 711 participants, both men and women, who ranged in age from 25 to 74. They were all participants in two national, longitudinal survey studies: Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) and National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE).

According to Charles and her colleagues, these findings show that mental health outcomes aren’t only affected by major life events — they also bear the impact of seemingly minor emotional experiences. The study suggests that chronic nature of these negative emotions in response to daily stressors can take a toll on long-term mental health.

In addition to Charles, co-authors on the study include Jennifer Piazza of California State University, Fullerton; and Jacqueline Mogle, Martin Sliwinski, and David Almeida of Pennsylvania State University.

neuromorphogenesis:

Rethinking The Stress Mindset: Can You Find The Upside of Pressure?

Is it true that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, or is stress always debilitating?

It’s striking how much of our emotional experience is down to interpretation.

Take the physical feelings you get when you’re about to talk in public: the sweaty palms, the churning stomach and the spinning room. Isn’t that much the same physical experience you get when you’ve fallen in love?

Yet one experience most would run a mile from and the other we enjoy. The difference is partly down to the meaning we give these events.

But how far does this go? What about the hassles of everyday life and stress in general? Is stress really a killer or can it be reinterpreted away?

Well, there’s certainly such a thing as the way that we habitually think about stress. One of the most common, which is frequently reinforced by the media, is the ‘stress-is-debilitating’ mindset.

What Crum et al. (2013) wonder in a new paper is: can we change this mindset and does thinking about stress in a positive way have any effect on how we react to it?

To conduct some preliminary tests, they recruited a group of investment bankers, who were split into three groups, each of which were shown a different 10-minute video. Some of them watched a video that suggested stress can be good for you.

The ‘stress-is-enhancing’ video suggested that some people do their best work under pressure: for example, Captain “Sully” Sullenberger landed his stricken airliner on the Hudson River and Winston Churchill successfully led Britain through WWII.

A second group watched a video reinforcing the idea that stress is debilitating, while a third acted as a control.

The bankers reported back over a few weeks on their stress mindset, how they were doing at work and their levels of stress. The results showed that those who’d seen the ‘stress-is-enhancing’ video did develop a more positive stress mindset. This led to them reporting better performance at work and fewer psychological problems over the subsequent two weeks.

This suggests something as simple as a short video can start to change how you think about stress, at least in the short-term.

Another study by Crum et al. examined one possible mechanism for how a changed mindset might be beneficial. This found that people who tended to think stress was enhancing were more likely to want feedback. So, people who think positively about stress are likely to use that to help them solve problems.

In addition, thinking that stress is enhancing was associated with lower levels of cortisol, a hormone closely associated with the stress response. In other words, people’s physiological reaction to stress was better when they endorsed the idea that stress is enhancing.

So, is stress good or bad for you? This evidence underlines the fact that, as so often, what you believe influences how both mind and body reacts.

neurosciencestuff:

Can Meditation Make You a More Compassionate Person?

Scientists have mostly focused on the benefits of meditation for the brain and the body, but a recent study by Northeastern University’s David DeSteno, published in Psychological Science, takes a look at what impacts meditation has on interpersonal harmony and compassion.

Several religious traditions have suggested that mediation does just that, but there has been no scientific proof—until now.

In this study, a team of researchers from Northeastern University and Harvard University examined the effects meditation would have on compassion and virtuous behavior, and the results were fascinating.

THE STUDY

This study—funded by the Mind and Life Institute—invited participants to complete eight-week trainings in two types of meditation. After the sessions, they were put to the test.

Sitting in a staged waiting room with three chairs were two actors. With one empty chair left, the participant sat down and waited to be called. Another actor using crutches and appearing to be in great physical pain, would then enter the room.  As she did, the actors in the chair would ignore her by fiddling with their phones or opening a book.

The question DeSteno and Paul Condon – a graduate student in DeSteno’s lab who led the study – and their team wanted to answer was whether the subjects who took part in the meditation classes would be more likely to come to the aid of the person in pain, even in the face of everyone else ignoring her. “We know meditation improves a person’s own physical and psychological wellbeing,” said Condon. “We wanted to know whether it actually increases compassionate behavior.”

MEDITATION WORKS

Among the non-meditating participants, only about 15 percent of people acted to help. But among the participants who were in the meditation sessions “we were able to boost that up to 50 percent,” said DeSteno.  This result was true for both meditation groups thereby showing the effect to be consistent across different forms of meditation.  “The truly surprising aspect of this finding is that meditation made people willing to act virtuous – to help another who was suffering – even in the face of a norm not to do so,” DeSteno said, “The fact that the other actors were ignoring the pain creates as ‘bystander-effect’ that normally tends to reduce helping.  People often wonder ‘Why should I help someone if no one else is?’”

These results appear to prove what the Buddhist theologians have long believed—that meditation is supposed to lead you to experience more compassion and love for all sentient beings. But even for non-Buddhists, the findings offer scientific proof for meditation techniques to alter the calculus of the moral mind.

(via neuroticthought)

neuromorphogenesis:

Mindfulness Made Simple

 by Christopher Bergland in The Athlete’s Way

Mindfulness” has become a buzzword that is often misinterpreted. What is mindfulness? How can it benefit you? 

Mindfulness is much more basic than most people realize. In fact, I’ve isolated 3 easy steps to kickstart a state of mindfulness in a few seconds. To kickstart a state of mindfulness all you have to do is: Stop. Breathe. Think about your thinking. Anybody can use this simple mindfulness technique throughout the day to stay calm, focused, optimistic, and kind.

This close-up picture of a daffodil illustrates simple mindfulness training. What part of the image is your attention drawn to first? Is your focus initially drawn to the stamen at the center? Where do your eyes and your attention go from there? Notice how you can hone in on the center or decide to inspect the abstract shapes and different colors in the surrounding. We all have the power to guide our thoughts consciously—to zoom in and zoom out on specific things in our environment and inside our minds. Obviously, you can decide how long you want to look at the daffodil, what parts of the image you want to focus on, and decide when to turn your attention towards something else. This is mindfulness in action.

A recent New York Times Magazine article by Susan Dominus titled ‘Is Giving the Secret To Getting Ahead” offers insights into the power of mindfulness to help people succeed professionally. Although the article doesn’t use the term ‘mindfulness’ specifically, the concepts of mindfulness are represented in the advice given throughout the article.

The Times article profiles Adam Grant, who is a professor in the Management Department at Wharton, and features the ideas from his upcoming book “Give and Take.” Grant is an expert in organizational psychology, which is designed to help people enjoy the work they do, and to keep them doing it. Grant is quoted as saying, “The greatest untapped source of motivation is a sense of service to others; focusing on the contribution of our work to other peoples’ lives has the potential to make us more productive than thinking about ourselves.” It is interesting that whether the motivation to practice mindfulness comes from a place of capitalistic shrewdness or Buddhist loving-kindness, the benefits for the individual and the collective are still there.

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is simply about being mindful of what you’re thinking and deciding where you choose to focus your attention. Ideally, one would choose to focus his or her attention towards compassion, loving-kindness, and optimism. Mindfulness is about deciding to look on the bright side and deciding to be kind to yourself and others. That’s it.

Mindfulness has its roots in Buddhism and the Noble Eightfold Path that Buddha taught over 2,500 years ago as the path to Nirvana or enlightenment. Although William James didn’t use the term “Mindfulness”, he explored the topic extensively in his life’s work and in The Principles of Psychology (1890). Mindfulness is not a new age fad. It has been around forever, but in a modern world it’s more important than ever we each begin practicing it.

Some purists and Buddhist teachers aren’t thrilled to see mindfulness being diluted and applied to pop psychology and business. However, most seem to realize that the more people in the world who are practicing some type of mindfulness the better. Unfortunately, several definitions of mindfulness are currently being used in modern psychology and mindfulness training. It’s like the Wild West when it comes to a standardized Western definition of mindfulness…almost anything goes.

I base my definition of mindfulness on the landmark study by Bishop, Lau et al. (2004) from the University of Toronto titled: Mindfulness: A Proposed Operational Definition published by the American Psychological Association. In their consensus on an operational definition of mindfulness Bishop and Lau propose a two-component model of mindfulness:

1.The first component involves the self-regulation of attention so that it is maintained on immediate experience, thereby allowing for increased recognition of mental events in the present moment.

2. The second component involves adopting a particular orientation toward one’s experiences in the present moment, an orientation that is characterized by curiosity, openness, and acceptance.

The Benefits of Mindfulness

There has been a surge of scientific research on mindfulness since Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn began teaching the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in 1979. In the past decades research has shown that the benefits of mindfulness include: stress reduction, improved concentration, boosts to working memory, reduced rumination, less emotional reactivity, more cognitive flexibility, higher level of relationship satisfaction, etc. The list goes on and on.

Studies on the benefits of mindfulness are currently trending heavily in psychology and medical journals. In the past month alone at least four studies were released on the benefits of mindfulness and mindfulness training. Two of particular interest are: “Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering” by Michael Mrazek and colleagues at UC Santa Barbara and another from Belgium which found that Mindfulness at School Reduces Likelihood of Depression-Related Symptoms in Adolescents.

Mindfulness Training 101

Many people avoid any type of ‘mindfulness training’ because they think that it’s complex, new-agey or fear that they ‘aren’t doing it right.’ Albert Einstein believed, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” I realize that my “3 steps to kickstart mindfulness” are verybasic. I simplify for a reason: I want to demystify mindfulness so more people will get in the habit of practicing mindfulness regularly throughout the day and benefit from it.

You don’t have to set aside time to sit quietly in the lotus position and burn incense to practice mindfulness. You can do it anytime, anywhere. From staying calm when you’re stuck in a traffic jam; to having a heart-to-heart conversation with a friend; to making scrambled eggs; to taking an exam; or when you’re making love with your partner… Being fully present in the moment creates mindfulness no matter what you are doing.

Mindfulness is about being aware of your surroundings, connecting, and then guiding your thoughts in a positive and constructive direction. With practice you’ll get better at guiding your thoughts to fine tune a state-of-mind that best fits whatever circumstance you find yourself in. 

Mindfulness and Athletics

As an athlete, I never labeled my mindset of being totally focused and ‘in the zone’ as being a state of ‘mindfulness.’ But it is. Again, this is mostly semantics. Anyone who exercises regularly or competes in sports learns through practice that being distracted (or focusing your attention on the negatives) will cause you to fail.

In order to master a sport (or complete a workout) athletes learn through practice how to guide their thoughts towards a positive and optimistic mindset. Everyone who works out regularly is doing a form of mindfulness training within the athletic process. You can bring this skillset back to the work-a-day world and create mindfulness in your daily life. This is the core principle of The Athlete’s Way.

Conclusion: Every Breath You Take

William James wrote: “Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings”

You have the power to focus your attention on positive thoughts that make you feel optimistic and hopeful; or you can think about negative things that make you feel cynical and depressed. You can choose to be mean and hateful, or kind and loving. The choice is yours. Mindfulness puts you in the driver’s seat of your thoughts and actions. 

On average, human beings take 20,000 breaths a day. That gives each of us 20,000 chances everyday to kickstart some mindfulness. If you don’t already, try practicing some simple mindfulness today.

neuromorphogenesis:

The Temporal Doppler Effect: Why The Future Feels Closer Than The Past

Like the sound of a passing ambulance siren, our perception of time distorts as it shoots by.

Sometimes psychologists come up with such good names for their findings that I’m powerless to resist. Take this newly minted expression: ‘the temporal Doppler effect’.

This really appeals to both the psychologist in me and my inner physics geek.

The Doppler effect is most often experienced when an ambulance with siren blaring travels past you. The pitch of the siren shifts downwards as it whizzes past. The siren’s notes aren’t actually changing in pitch; it’s the effect of the ambulance’s movement on the sound-waves reaching your ear that produces the effect. You can see the video here.

So, what is a temporal Doppler effect and what does this have to do with psychology?

It seems to suggest that as events approach us from the future they feel closer, compared with events in the past, which feel further away as they recede. In other words: one week in the future feels closer in time than one week in the past.

How far away does it feel?

Could that be true? For example, imagine I ask you one week before Valentine’s Day how psychologically distant that feels to you. Then, imagine I ask you the same question one week after Valentine’s Day. Surely they should feel about the same distance?

What the temporal Doppler effect suggests is that Valentine’s Day will feel closer in time one week beforehand than one week after.

Sounds mad? Well this is exactly the experiment that Caruso et al. (2013) carried out. And guess what? They got this temporal Doppler effect. On a 1 to 7 scale, where 1 means it feels close in time and 7 means it feels far in time, people rated an upcoming Valentine’s Day an average of 3.9 when it was one week in the future, but an average of 4.8 when it was one week in the past.

They got similar results for comparisons of time-points both one month and one year in the future and the past. This temporal Doppler effect kept showing up: the future seems to feel psychologically closer to people than the past, despite the fact we know it’s exactly the same.

Metaphors of time and space

So why does it happen? Caruso et al. put forward two explanations, one more abstract than the other. I’ll do the abstract one first but feel free to bail out and get on to the concrete one if it gets too much!

The abstract argument goes like this: we don’t directly experience time although we see its effects. Unlike space, which we can clearly see, time is invisible. In contrast, you can reach out and touch objects and feel the space between them.

Because time is abstract we try to understand it psychologically using metaphors. We say that ‘time flows like a river’, ‘time marches on’ or ‘time flies’. These are all spatial ways of thinking about an abstract idea.

The result is that we unconsciously apply the same spatial rules to time. Just like things that are coming towards us sound higher in pitch and appear to us closer in space than things going away, so we intuit that things ahead of us in time are also closer than things in the past.

Convinced?

If not you’ll be interested in a further experiment Caruso et al. carried out where they tried to reverse the temporal Doppler effect with a simple manipulation: they had people walking backwards in virtual reality (VR).

Compared to those walking forwards in VR, those walking backwards showed no tendency towards thinking the future was closer than the past. This helps support the idea that how we think about time is linked to how we think about space and why the temporal Doppler effect occurs.

Future-facing

Now here’s the more concrete explanation. The temporal Doppler effect is also highly adaptive. It’s very useful for our survival and success in life that the future seems closer than the past. What happens tomorrow we can plan for, what happened yesterday is just a memory.

Yes, it’s important to understand where you’ve come from, but without a plan, you can’t know where you’re going. The temporal Doppler effect is one example of how we’re future-oriented creatures; always scheming for, worrying about, plotting and simulating the future. So that hopefully, when we get there, we’ve got some kind of plan.

neuromorphogenesis:

The Power of Touch

Touch is the first sense we acquire and the secret weapon in many a successful relationship. Here’s how to regain fluency in your first language.

You’re in a crowded subway car on a Tuesday morning, or perhaps on a city bus. Still-sleepy commuters, lulled by vibrations, remain hushed, yet silently broadcast their thoughts.

A toddler in his stroller looks warily at his fellow passengers, brows stitched with concern. He turns to Mom for reassurance, reaching out a small hand. She quietly takes it, squeezes, and releases. He relaxes, smiles, turns away—then back to Mom. She takes his hand again: squeeze and release.

A twenty-something in a skirt and blazer sits stiffly, a leather-bound portfolio on her lap. She repeatedly pushes a few blonde wisps off her face, then touches her neck, her subconscious movements both revealing and relieving her anxiety about her 9 a.m. interview.

A couple propped against a pole shares messages of affection; she rubs his arms with her hands, he nuzzles his face in her hair.

A middle-aged woman, squished into a corner, assuredly bumps the young man beside her with some elbow and hip. The message is clear; he instantly adjusts to make room.

Probing our ability to communicate nonverbally is hardly a new psychological tack; researchers have long documented the complex emotions and desires that our posture, motions, and expressions reveal. Yet until recently, the idea that people can impart and interpret emotional content via another nonverbal modality—touch—seemed iffy, even to researchers, such as DePauw University psychologist Matthew Hertenstein, who study it. In 2009, he demonstrated that we have an innate ability to decode emotions via touch alone. In a series of studies, Hertenstein had volunteers attempt to communicate a list of emotions to a blindfolded stranger solely through touch. Many participants were apprehensive about the experiment. “This is a touch-phobic society,” he says. “We’re not used to touching strangers, or even our friends, necessarily.”

But touch they did—it was, after all, for science. The results suggest that for all our caution about touching, we come equipped with an ability to send and receive emotional signals solely by doing so. Participants communicated eight distinct emotions—anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, sympathy, happiness, and sadness—with accuracy rates as high as 78 percent. “I was surprised,” Hertenstein admits. “I thought the accuracy would be at chance level,” about 25 percent.

Previous studies by Hertenstein and others have produced similar findings abroad, including in Spain (where people were better at comminicating via touch than in America) and the U.K. Research has also been conducted in Pakistan and Turkey. “Everywhere we’ve studied this, people seem able to do it,” he says.

Indeed, we appear to be wired to interpret the touch of our fellow humans. A study providing evidence of this ability was published in 2012 by a team who used fMRI scans to measure brain activation in people being touched. The subjects, all heterosexual males, were shown a video of a man or a woman who was purportedly touching them on the leg. Unsurprisingly, subjects rated the experience of male touch as less pleasant. Brain scans revealed that a part of the brain called the primary somatosensory cortex responded more sharply to a woman’s touch than to a man’s. But here’s the twist: The videos were fake. It was always a woman touching the subjects.

The results were startling, because the primary somatosensory cortex had been thought to encode only basic qualities of touch, such as smoothness or pressure. That its activity varied depending on whom subjects believed was touching them suggests that the emotional and social components of touch are all but inseparable from physical sensations. “When you’re being touched by another person, your brain isn’t set up to give you the objective qualities of that touch,” says study coauthor Michael Spezio, a psychologist at Scripps College. “The entire experience is affected by your social evaluation of the person touching you.”

If touch is a language, it seems we instinctively know how to use it. But apparently it’s a skill we take for granted. When asked about it, the subjects in Hertenstein’s studies consistently underestimated their ability to communicate via touch—even while their actions suggested that touch may in fact be more versatile than voice, facial expression, and other modalities for expressing emotion.

“With the face and voice, in general we can identify just one or two positive signals that are not confused with each other,” says Hertenstein. For example, joy is the only positive emotion that has been reliably decoded in studies of the face. Meanwhile, his research shows that touch can communicate multiple positive emotions: joy, love, gratitude, and sympathy. Scientists used to believe touching was simply a means of enhancing messages signaled through speech or body language, “but it seems instead that touch is a much more nuanced, sophisticated, and precise way to communicate emotions,” Hertenstein says.

It may also increase the speed of communication: “If you’re close enough to touch, it’s often the easiest way to signal something,” says Laura Guerrero, coauthor of Close Encounters: Communication in Relationships, who researches nonverbal and emotional communication at Arizona State University. This immediacy is particularly noteworthy when it comes to bonding. “We feel more connected to someone if they touch us,” Guerrero notes.

neuromorphogenesis:

Here’s a Quick Way to Fire Up Your Motivation

Why backup plans (sometimes) motivate, even if you never use them.

Before reading a new article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I never thought of a backup plan as something that might be motivating in itself.

Surely all the benefit of a backup plan accrues when the main plan goes wrong and there’s something to fall back on?

While coming up with a ‘plan b’ might be necessary, I always thought of it more as a chore. (Ho-hum now I’ve made my main plan, instead of getting started, I’ve got to spend more time thinking about an alternative plan).

But when you start to think about it, backup plans don’t just make sense as, well, backup plans, but also as a means of driving you forward at the precarious early stages of a project.

That’s because our motivation to succeed is heavily tied in with our expectations of success. No one drives to a shop that they are pretty sure is closed. What feeds our motivation is knowing that we have a good chance of achieving the goal.

It sounds obvious but it leads to a non-obvious conclusion. It means that a little more time spent thinking about a backup plan or alternative ways to get where you’re going will help you, even if you never have to actually use them.

Opportunity drives motivation

A new study demonstrates this nicely using a coffee shop customer loyalty programme (Huang & Zhang, 2013).

Participants were told they had to get a card stamped six times to get a free coffee. One group in the study, though, was manipulated into thinking that they had more ways of collecting stamps than the other group. So, some people thought there were more ways of reaching their goal than others.

Again: actually there weren’t more ways of getting stamps—the experimenters were trying to remove the better known advantage of a backup plan (that you might need to use it) and just look at the effects on motivation of thinking there are more ways to achieve your goal.

What they found was that those who thought there were more alternatives for collecting the loyalty stamps were almost twice as likely to join the programme.

They also checked this out in different contexts and got the same results again and again. When people thought there were more opportunities to donate blood, write reviews of movies, or memorise word lists, they demonstrated more motivation.

Backfiring backup plans

Backup plans, then, can sometimes have a motivating effect, but not always; there is a twist in the tail.

What about when you’re half-way through your project or towards that goal of yours? You’re starting to feel very confident that you will get there. What kind of effect do more alternatives for reaching your goal have then?

When Huang and Zhang looked at this, they found the effect reversed.

When people already had five stamps on their loyalty card, more ways to get the sixth and final one actually de-motivated them. Similarly when people thought the blood drive had almost reached its target, rather than being right at the beginning, fewer options lowered their motivation to donate.

This might seem a little strange, but it chimes with other research that has looked at the psychology of choices. Generally speaking, choices are more pleasurable at the beginning of a project. But once we’re on the road to success, options go from being a pleasure to a pain.

So backup plans, or alternative means of achieving our goals, start out reassuring, but end up as distractions.

This means that the use of options in motivation should be arranged like a funnel. At the start (the wide end), more options pump up initial motivation; but later on, when success is all but assured, options slow us down. Once the end is in sight (the narrow end), it’s far better to forget about backup plans and push on for victory.

Just the same is true when motivating others: give people options to get them interested at the start, but towards the end, they should be reduced to avoid distraction.